Waymo in Portland • Hacker News Board

Re: Waymo in Portland

#221

Post by xvedejas » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 8:51 PM UTC

fsckboy wrote: post #202

starkparker wrote: post #127

For context, this is coming in as TriMet is laying off staff, reducing service frequency, eliminating bus lines, and cutting parts of light rail routes due to a $300M budget shortfall. The cuts were exacerbated by state Republicans getting a proposed payroll tax repeal onto the ballot next month; TriMet relies heavily on payroll taxes that are deeply unpopular among the self-employed and small business owners, so the…

> TriMet relies heavily on payroll taxes that are deeply unpopular among the self-employed and small business owners just a point of clarification, the term "payroll taxes" refers to Social Security and Medicare taxes that are applied to your paycheck; you don't pay them, self-employed and employers pay those. Wage-earners do not pay them directly, but do collect the social security and Medicare benefits that they pa…

> you don't pay them, self-employed and employers pay those

If a tax is a function of the worker's income, it doesn't really matter (except for nominal terms) whether the worker or employer pays the taxes, the economic effect is the same. Who actually bears the burden of the tax ends up determined by the price elasticity of supply/demand in that labor market, and is not determined by who is on the hook for the literal payment.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#222

Post by throwaway-blaze » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 8:53 PM UTC

ssl-3 wrote: post #213

xnx wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The future looks an awful lot like intermodal containers for people. Love this concept. As self-driving vehicles become a larger share of road use, roads can be more efficiently designed just for them: no speed limit, just 2 strips of pavement for the tires, no signage or striping, etc.

Perfect. We'll just build the cars with parts that seldom fail. And we'll make them very strong, so that the only risk from hitting a deer or even a cow is a splash of gore. That should help eliminate the need to turn. A loud horn and flashing lights will do pretty well for any errant humans that cross the path. We can even reduce rolling resistance by using steel wheels instead of rubber, and we can make the road a…

if you can also figure out how to have the cars automatically detach and park themselves in the owners' driveway, you're on to something.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#223

Post by hyperadvanced » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 8:53 PM UTC

hitekker wrote: post #203

Seems like a hostile market for Waymo. Many Portlanders despise tech giants and are strongly anti-car & anti-AI, far more than SF. Not to mention Portland's political / governance / people problems already inclines the population to anger.

If Waymo is still operating there by the end 2027 I’ll eat my hat.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#224

Post by charcircuit » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 8:54 PM UTC

svnt wrote: post #96

davnicwil wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate what you're saying and am a big fan of long distance train and bus journeys myself and have done a lot of both, sleeping and not. But one huge factor that you have to contend with is the randomness of the tragedy of the commons problem on public transport / shared transport. A train journey can be blissful to sleep on right until a loud group gets on and sits across from you and there's no seats availabl…

It is a chicken and egg problem. As long as the majority of people who would maintain the social environment are avoiding the social environment, the healthy consensus/operating regime can never emerge.

It's not. Pass a law that continuing to be noisy or disruptive on a bus or train after a warning results in 10 years of prison time with no parole and consistently enforce it. The problem will solve itself without a chicken and egg problem. Problematic people can simply be removed from society to make for a good social environment. Adding more good people is not the only option and in fact only hides the problem instead of solving it.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#225

Post by fsckboy » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 8:55 PM UTC

tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #211

fsckboy wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TriMet relies heavily on payroll taxes that are deeply unpopular among the self-employed and small business owners just a point of clarification, the term "payroll taxes" refers to Social Security and Medicare taxes that are applied to your paycheck; you don't pay them, self-employed and employers pay those. Wage-earners do not pay them directly, but do collect the social security and Medicare benefits that they pa…

Employers and employees split payroll taxes 50/50 by law. You definitely pay payroll taxes as an employee in the US. If you are self-employed, you have to manually pay the tax because there's no employer wage to automatically deduct from. A quick search could have resolved your confusion before commenting nonsense.

ah, good correction, that's why the self employed hate them, they have to pay both halves.

the main reason for the distaste is that self-employed people generally fall in the class of people who do a better job preparing for retirement, and the govt old age/retirement systems are not intelligently run, it's more like "money under the bed" that gets raided to pay the current generation of old people rather than being saved not saved for the future. That same money in a private insurance account would offer the better returns as investment accounts do.

the reason the retirement funds are set to go bankrupt is that there are a lot of baby boomers. This is not the baby boomers fault, when govt retirement programs were set up back in the depression era, it gave pension eligibility to people who had not paid into a retirement system, paid for by current workers, and that can kept getting kicked down the road. I don't think anybody wants to see penniless old people, they simply want a government that plans ahead and doesn't keep kicking the can down the road, and doesn't raid pension monies to use as "free money" to pay for other government pork.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#226

Post by tristanj » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 8:56 PM UTC

ggreer wrote: post #154

tristanj wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo inflates their prices to be above that of Uber/Lyft because they don't have enough vehicles to meet demand. But their operating costs / mile are lower than that of Uber/Lyft. I'd estimate their internal cost per mile is approx. half that of Uber/Lyft. They pocket the rest because they need to recoup decades of expensive R&D. There is also no reason to compete with Uber/Lyft on price because they are just leavin…

It's not clear to me if their costs are lower yet. Waymo's vehicles are rather expensive (estimates for their newer Zeekrs are around $75k each), and they need to pay some number of remote monitors for exceptional situations (as noticed during the recent blackout in San Francisco). They also have to collect tons of data to build & maintain high resolution 3D maps of the areas they operate in. And they have to pay eng…

We're looking at different metrics, you're analyzing the average total cost, while I'm analyzing the marginal cost. Waymo has enormous fixed costs like you mentioned, mapping cities and paying engineers are not cheap, which need to be amortized over a massive self-driving fleet. But those are fixed costs which don't increase with fleet size. Waymo currently operates only ~3000 vehicles, which is not enough to amortize those fixed costs into overall profitability.

What matters most are marginal costs (i.e. how much does it cost for Waymo to add 1 more ride). Looking at marginal costs, Waymo takes in more money than it spends on each ride, so projecting outwards when Waymo operates a large enough fleet, Waymo will be profitable.

Uber/Lyft run enormous fleets of ~2 million vehicles in the US, and that's how they are able to maintain profitability. They can spread their engineering and management expenses over millions of rides.

---

Doing my own math, the marginal costs for Waymo are:

Revenue: Each Waymo vehicle brings in ~$50/hour

Expenses: Waymo must pay for

* Assume the cost of a vehicle is $100k

* Amortized depreciation of the car (assume vehicles need to be fully replaced after ~250,000 miles, vehicles average 25 miles / hour, vehicles need to be fully replaced after 10,000 hours, cost is $10/hour)

* Maintenance (Assume the total cost of maintenance is an additional 25% of the vehicle price, vehicle price is $100k and vehicle lasts 10,000 hours, cost is $2.5/hour). This is likely an underestimate, I didn't model the cost of a mechanic, so this could be as high as $5-7/hour.

* Support (assume 1 support agent can support 10 vehicles, Philippine support agent costs $10/hour, so amortized $1/hour per vehicle)

* Cleaning (needed daily, costs $1/hour per vehicle)

* Datacenter compute for vehicle coordination ($0.50/hour per vehicle)

* Electricity (Assume $2/hour)

10 + 2.5 + 1 + 1 + 0.5 + 2 = $17/hour to operate a Waymo.

In conclusion, the marginal costs for Waymo is very profitable.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#227

Post by guywithabike » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 8:57 PM UTC

QuercusMax wrote: post #174

Noumenon72 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has it been shown that screaming drugged out homeless riders avoid the presence of crowds? Is there any physical mechanism where having more people on the trains leads to Daniel-Penny-like suppression of drugged out homeless riders? Or does "getting more people onto the trains" just mean removing their options until they are forced to ignore the drugged out homeless riders? As a solution, "get MORE people onto the tr…

Safety in numbers. There's a reason there's not an issue during the day and during heavy commute hours.

There absolutely are serious issues at all times, regardless of how busy the trains are. I'm sorry, but as someone who actually lives in Portland I'm telling you that mentally ill drug users do not give a crap about how many people there are in the train car. After the third time I had to move my kids to different cars or even exit the train entirely due to open drug use and dangerous behavior, I swore off public transit for good.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#228

Post by blks » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 8:57 PM UTC

starkparker wrote: post #127

For context, this is coming in as TriMet is laying off staff, reducing service frequency, eliminating bus lines, and cutting parts of light rail routes due to a $300M budget shortfall. The cuts were exacerbated by state Republicans getting a proposed payroll tax repeal onto the ballot next month; TriMet relies heavily on payroll taxes that are deeply unpopular among the self-employed and small business owners, so the…

Waymo is an expensive taxi service, not a solution to public transport.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#229

Post by rootusrootus » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 8:59 PM UTC

Sleaker wrote: post #30

hdndjsbbs wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't Baltimore be the first Waymo market that actually gets snow? I don't think they've cracked driving in a real Midwest/northeast winter.

We do get ice and snow in Portland, along with flooding and landslides. No, it's not the same as Midwest, but we do get a few days every other year or so that you just don't drive out in. The black ice around a couple curvy sections of i-5 are notoriously bad at night in winters. (Terwilliger)

I have lived in the midwest, as well as Portland. It is good that Portland only occasionally gets ice, because in like-for-like conditions it is way more dangerous than the midwest. Primarily because of hills. I found driving in snow & ice in the midwest to be mostly a non-event, even on inadequate tires.

Re: Waymo in Portland

#230

Post by jandrewrogers » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 9:00 PM UTC

Silamoth wrote: post #62

boc wrote: post #4

I've determined that my ultimate dream car would be something like a Rivian but with Waymo tech, so I can drive it manually when I want/need (snowstorms, off-road), but I can also let it drive me across the country at night while I camp in the back. Would absolutely change the way we move across the US, especially if you have hobbies that involve a lot of gear and equipment.

At least 80% of what you’re describing would be satisfied by trains and buses. It’s wild that Americans are so obsessed with self-driving cars while ignoring public transit that solves most of the problems. It’s reliable, more efficient, better for the environment, and less stressful for you. I’m not saying cars shouldn’t ever exist. The ‘last mile problem’ is a thing, and proper self-driving cars could be good for p…

You are misunderstanding the nature of the problem. I like trains but they can't and don't address the issue the OP is raising. Even if the US already had public trains it still isn't a "last mile" problem. Especially in the western US, it is a "last hundred miles" problem.

No public transport system that remotely makes any kind of economic sense, either in terms of infrastructure or operational cost, can replace the established network topology that exists for cars in the US. The connectivity is much more like a mesh than a hub-and-spoke model. Even though the US has a strong regional jet system that connects arbitrary nodes in that graph it still doesn't entirely avoid the "last hundred miles" problem.

A lot of American long-distance travel is not between two big cities. Even in Europe, similar kinds of routes have no train service and limited bus service.